[kwlug disc.] All of you Ubuntu people

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Thursday 08 February 2007 11:51 pm, Peter McAlpine wrote:
> Hello to all, I'm new to the list but this interesting topic prompted
> me to come out of my lurking.

Welcome.  I'm a longtime lurker myself, but I come out of hiding occasionally.

> Ubuntu offered everyone what they thought they wanted: happy people
> with the newer versions of packages. Everything was great and
> wonderful... Except the Ubuntu developers went on the assumption that
> they could continue to use the infrastructure that Debian had worked
> so hard to build. Ubuntu was shipping packages that had Debian
> developers listed as the maintainers so users started contacting
> those Debian developers for help with their problems. Some of the
> emails on the debian-devel mailing list got pretty nasty WRT this
> subject.

That's the problem with sticking your name on anything; someone's bound to try 
and hold you to it.  In the case of maintainership... well if Ubuntu put out 
new versions of packages but kept the old maintainer's name on the package... 
shame on them.  That's like ripping one in an elevator and blaming the short 
guy in the corner.  If you're not willing to step up and put your name on 
your own work, fine, but don't volunteer someone else.

> You asked which distro to use, and if you're willing to push through
> the installer and getting things working the way you want then go
> with Debian and you'll end up smarter and with a more powerful and
> flexible system. If you need to get up and running and want things to
> work quickly then Ubuntu.

See, this is where I feel a lot of OSS people go wrong.  The feeling that if 
they do it the hard way, their system is somehow more powerful.  It's not.  
More flexible perhaps.  Are you personally smarter because of it?  Of course.  
But your processor's not more efficient, you're binaries aren't running 
better...  That's just hogwash.  And believe me, I know from doing things the 
hard way; I'm an old slacker.  Debian's installer is still too pretty for my 
likes.  :-)

I've got a Kubuntu install because I couldn't get my slackware DVD to boot on 
an older system, and while it's different enough to cause me some headaches, 
I certainly don't feel that my Slack installs are more powerful.  I do, 
however, feel like I can just sit down and get done what I need in my Slack 
installs instead of worry about what the damn package manager or 
configuration layer is going to think of me editing files on my own.

-A.